Miles walked beside Elynn towards the final door.

Elynn was walking slowly, pressing his fists against the ground like crutches, swinging his agile third limb forward to slump against the floor, rocking his weight onto it, then repeating the motion to take another step. His pace was almost slower than Miles could comfortably walk.

He could have still been stiff from his time spent hiding in the crate, or maybe he was afraid of what he’d find at the end of the corridor.

Miles had learned that Elynn was male, with Floreen being a two-gendered species, that he was about forty years old, and that he had family on Ialis who all either worked as divers or as professionals that serviced divers.

He’d been willing to continue talking after they left the side room, so Miles didn’t begrudge the extra time they had.

“Do you actually know what makes sapients lose their minds here?” Miles asked.

“Our protections were based on several mutually contradictory theories,” Elynn started. He spoke distractedly, his gaze not leaving the door at the far end of the corridor. “We guarded against airborne toxins released during a reconfiguration, radiation trauma, foreign engrams being imposed over an individual’s natural thought forms, even the revelation of information that is inimical to ordered thought. All possibilities have some evidence supporting them. None have been demonstrated conclusively.”

“Which one were your implants meant to protect you from?”

“The latter two. Our neural implants censor any harmful information or engram patterns, and disrupt any new memories that prove central to incoherent behavior.”

“But they broke down.”

“Yes. We can examine the devices to find out why once we leave. Our next attempt has a better chance of success.”

“You’re coming back? Even after all of this?”

“Yes. Preparation is the guarantor of our success.”

Miles bit back on a harsh response. Their first plan had been crazy, but coming back to try it again seemed outright insane.

They were getting close to the door at the end of the corridor and Miles could feel a fluttering settle into his stomach.

The door was just like the others, a round mat of coiled wood with a handle and a latch. It was just as baffling to Trin’s scanner as the others.

They took up their positions around the door, Torg at the front, Miles, Drani, and Trin standing behind to back him up. Elynn stood at the rear. He had no way to contribute if the situation at the door turned violent.

When they were ready, Torg flipped the latch and pushed open the door.

The door opened silently, revealing a laboratory space.

Nothing immediately jumped out at them.

The room visible through the doorway was bigger than any they’d seen so far, obviously the main chamber of the little Floreen complex.

Bigger pieces of equipment sat around the floor. Miles recognized some of them from the video log. Other pieces were clearly dungeon tech, objects that were too big to have been carried and too strange and irregular to be normal commercial gear.

One huge black pillar stood just off the center of the room, a stalagmite of melted boxes in various textures and various shades of charcoal gray. It prickled with arms of ribbed wire, every arm holding a screen of a different irregular shape, every screen populated by characters from unknown languages. The pillar narrowed up from its base, then expanded again as it neared the ceiling, giving it the silhouette of a looming figure.

The walls of the room were partially made of a textured wooden surface; curving, tufted with papery growths, leaving it looking like the inside of a walnut shell. In other places the textured wall gave way to metal panels with screens and fittings hanging off them seemingly at random. Ring ladders climbed walls, leading to nowhere. Terminal screens were placed at heights and angles that made them impossible to read. This looked like the dungeon architecture Miles was used to.

One of the fibrous walls had a window, just a half-circle hole set into a foot-thick wall. Beyond it was a darkness so deep it almost looked solid. The light from the strips in the room vanished immediately beyond, not absorbed, not reflected, just lost to space, the same way that light shining into the night sky was lost to space. It was a darkness that had depth, Miles felt. He felt his gaze drawn to it.

A figure appeared from behind the pillar, stepping casually out into view. One of the Floreen divers. They were enclosed in a banded white bodysuit that looked more like environmental gear than clothes, with a deflated hood hanging across their back. They wore the tech shield collar that was standard for the group, and had a bundle of comms, computers, and other devices hanging from a clip around their waist like a bundle of keys.

The figure was distracted by a text-covered tablet in their hands. They peered down at it through a head-mounted interface device, reading as they meandered toward a row of covered benches at the side of the room.

“Progost Ovren,” Elynn said, pushing past Torg to get into the room.

Miles took another look at the figure in the room. She didn’t have any obvious differences that would mark her as the Ovren from the video, but the visual interface she wore was the same.

Ovren continued reading for another few seconds before she looked up at Elynn.

Her black eyes were round and expressionless, and for a second Miles worried that her audit implants had failed as well, but then they expanded into vertical ovals.

“Subrost Elynn,” she said. She stared at him for a moment then turned her attention back to the tablet. “The environment specifications require recalibration. There is an adversarial force adjusting our settings away from the ideal.”

Elynn hesitated. His mouth fell open and his eyes flattened towards the back.

“Progost, six members of our team are dead. One is alive but has succumbed to the regression effect.”

“Yes. I believe it is the adversarial effect,” Ovren said, not looking up from the tablet. “The environment specifications are ready for your attention.”

Elynn took a step towards her. “Progost, we must evacuate. We must review our findings and return with adjusted defenses.”

“I have the adjustments needed for our defenses.”

Ovren reached the row of benches she’d been walking toward and pulled a plastic sheet back from one of them. Underneath was another Floreen diver, their expression blank, their mouth open but motionless. She took a device from her belt and began passing it over them.

The former diver’s jaw twitched as the researcher’s hand passed over their face, but weakly, and the rest of their body remained motionless.

Miles looked from the uncovered figure to the other two benches, still covered. He dropped Eyes of the Emigre and fell into Eyes of the Altruist.

The glowing shapes of life appeared over all three benches — the partially covered figure, as well as the two that were still draped in plastic sheets.

There were three living Floreen divers lying there. They’d found the missing members of the group.

“Hi. I’m Miles,” he said to Ovren, forcing his gaze away from the immobile divers. He switched his perceptions back to Eyes of the Émigré as he spoke. “This is Trin and Torg. Do you need help evacuating?”

Ovren looked at him as if seeing Miles and the others for the first time. He didn’t hold her attention long before she was pulling out a device and wiring it onto the scalp of the former researcher she’d been scanning.

“We are not evacuating,” she said. “I have a data package you may send when you leave. With adequate compensation for your time, of course.”

Elynn didn’t seem immediately concerned that Ovren didn’t want to leave. His attention was on the figure on the bench. He paced up to them.

“Is Subrost Yunan suffering from regression?” he asked, looking from the diver to Ovren.

“They all are,” Ovren replied. “However, they are still of use to the objective. I have paralyzed them. They pose no threat to us.”

Ovren continued working for a minute, pulling the sheets off the other two divers and wiring them up in the same way. When she was done, the three were all networked into the same central piece of equipment.

“Do you think you can help them?” Miles asked.

Ovren looked at Miles again, her eyes fixed in a way that made her seem surprised he was still there.

“I believe they can help me,” she said after a moment. She pointed at a nearby computer terminal without looking at it. “Subrost Elynn. The calibrations.”

Elynn trudged to the console and started operating it. From what Miles could see of the interface, changing the calibrations seemed to involve compiling packages of specific images and recordings.

“How can they help?” Miles asked.

“Their affliction increases their aggression and reduces their ability to reason,” Ovren said. “The cause is unknown, but the opportunity to study its progression is a great advantage in developing countermeasures.”

Trin had wandered into the room. He was looking around forlornly at the equipment. He was probably disappointed they wouldn’t be able to take any of it. The gear they’d already banked was waiting for them in the cart further down the corridor.

Miles felt a momentary flash of guilt at the thought of taking what they’d gathered after finding the survivors, but if Ovren hadn’t even checked the other rooms for survivors, she couldn’t care much about the equipment. Elynn couldn’t have missed what they’d been doing, but he hadn’t said anything about it.

The research team’s leader seemed morbidly uninterested in anything outside of her research. It was enough to make Miles wonder if her mind had been affected after all.

If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

“Do you really want us to leave you here?” he asked.

“Yes. I want you to leave,” Ovren said. “Soon. Give me a moment to compile my reports.”

In the end, Miles didn’t know enough about her to tell whether she was being irrational, or just dedicated to her work. Elynn hadn’t called her out on it.

Ovren picked a different computer pad from her bundle and began swiping at the screen, occasionally stopping to transfer files from another pad.

Miles walked back to where Trin, Drani, and Torg were standing.

“I don't like just leaving them here,” he said.

“We not just leaving. They giving us a job,” Trin said. “We are professional. We follow new employer's orders.”

Torg clicked rapidly to himself. The noise didn't translate, more like a noise of frustration than a vocalization.

Miles let out a breath and looked back at Progost Ovren. She didn’t seem like she would come with them willingly, and now that they’d been reunited, Elynn was back to following her orders.

For all Miles knew, she was right, and she had found a way to keep them safe and continue their research. It wasn’t a bet that Miles would make, but he didn’t know enough to tell them they were wrong.

After a minute of waiting for Ovren to finish compiling her notes, Miles found himself staring at the dark window at the side of the room. It yawned open like a hole in skin, unnatural, unnerving, at odds with even the chaotic construction of the dungeon.

He slowly wandered over to it.

The impression of an endless chasm was even stronger close up. The air beyond the opening was cold and smelled of nothing. There was slow movement in the space beyond the gap, a gentle breeze pushing out, then drawing back in. The hairs on Miles’ arms moved with it.

He rested his hands on the open layer of wall that framed its bottom edge and peered out.

Looking down, he couldn’t see anything like a floor to the space. For all he could tell, it might go down forever. An endless chasm, or a bottomless pit.

For an insane moment, Miles felt the urge to push himself out into the darkness. He imagined finding himself weightless on the outside of the room, hanging on the outside of the wall of a box suspended in nothing. He imagined being able to climb around, to find a way down, to find out what waited for him deeper in the dungeon. He had the impossible image of the dungeon as a vast empty space, dense with potential, but unobstructed, where he might fall forever.

“What is this?” he asked, shaken.

He turned to look at Ovren, hoping for a look of recognition from the researcher, something to indicate that Miles wasn’t having a unique reaction to the hole.

Ovren glanced up from her tablet and answered without much interest.

“An opening on the interstitial medium. From my scans it forms a gaseous pocket around constructions, while remaining solid further out. I believe it to be a solid field made of some kind of universal matter.”

Miles turned back and looked out at the blackness. The longer he stared, the more he thought he could hear something coming from the dark. Like stringed instruments, or the whine of dust vibrating between metal plates. There was something musical about it.

Trin took notice of what Miles was looking at and wandered over. He pulled up his scanner and spent a minute switching between modes.

“Is soupy for two hundred meters, then gets muddy, then is like gas giant. Is too thick to swim through. If you go out too far, it will crush you.”

“That matches my own readings,” Ovren said, not looking up from her work.

Trin was describing a version of Ialis that wasn’t a ball of rock, or even an empty void, but a vast dense ocean of unidentified matter. In that image, the rooms and corridors he knew from past dives were just narrow habitats floating in the unobstructed darkness.

“Why even have structures?” Miles asked. “Why not just let the planet stay solid? Why the constantly shifting rooms?”

Ovren answered while tapping on a tablet.

“I believe the artifact has a habitation impulse. Any interior surface exposed to the exterior, as in the crater boundary, will develop traversable openings. Beyond these, the artifact produces habitats suitable for nearby sapient life.” She gestured to a piece of equipment in the room, a ten-sided geometric shape made up of networked spheres, each joined to others by metal rods. “We are able to manipulate it to an extent with a battery of artificial sapiences. Four thousand sapient minds, each reflecting on variations on a specific habitat. When enough of them coincide, the artifact begins to contort in the direction of their expectations.”

Miles’ gaze fell on the battery of computers. He knew enough about artificial intelligence in the spiral to know there was no practical difference between a synthetic sapient and a real one, though he had the impression there was a legal difference.

There were no lights or displays on the device, no indicators to show what the synthetic inhabitants were thinking or experiencing in there. He supposed there didn’t need to be, if they were just being used to imagine a place that would be suitable for Ovren to work in.

Her theory on how the dungeon designed its interior didn’t exactly match up with his own experiences. One of his earliest visits had brought him to a room that almost perfectly recreated a woodland scene from Earth. Even if he wasn’t the only human on Ialis, there weren’t four thousand, and he hadn’t been asking for a forest.

It only made sense if the dungeon paid more attention to some people than others. Maybe it went for novelty, and Miles had been the first human it had seen. Maybe it'd just been an unlikely coincidence. There had to be something to Ovren’s theory. They had managed to design their own habitat down here.

But if the dungeon was actively trying to make a habitable environment for sapients, why did it destroy anyone who tried to stay there?

“Leave,” a voice croaked in the room behind them.

Miles and Trin both turned sharply to look.

The word had been hollow and breathless.

Miles scanned the room quickly, looking for the source. He cycled into and out of Eyes of the Altruist, looking for anyone who hadn't been there before. He didn’t find anyone.

It hadn’t been Ovren or Elynn, and he couldn’t place the voice until it spoke again.

“Leave,” the voice repeated.

The words were coming from one of the afflicted Floreen divers. They were still motionless on their bench, staring up at the ceiling, still hooked into the others by trailing wires, but their jaw was open.

Ovren didn’t seem startled, but Elynn’s mouth was hanging open, his eyes dilated into circular dots.

Soon the other two joined in, echoing the word in their own distinct tones.

“Leave.”

“Leave.”

They had voices like air being pumped through dry reeds, with no moisture and no emotion.

“Their minds are networked,” Ovren said, not waiting for the question. “This is a reproduction of an earlier experiment. Networking their faculties to augment their cognition creates this cascade effect. There is no cause for alarm. It is vocalization, but not speech. I believe if I can refine the connections I may be able to restore a level of sapience, in gestalt, if not in any one individual.”

“They’re telling us to leave,” Miles said.

“An interesting but baseless hypothesis,” Ovren said. “Their vocalizations do not consistently match any indexed language.”

Miles was hearing words from the networked divers, but the others could only hear noises.

“I’m an index mage,” Miles said. “My translation magic is reading it as ‘Leave’.”

“What magic tells you is not a sound basis for study,” Ovren said, dismissively.

Miles looked at Drani, hoping for backup, but Drani couldn’t even understand what Miles was saying. He didn’t have and had never needed Eyes of the Emigre.

“It’s never failed me before,” Miles said.

“I will record your observation, but I will not leave,” Ovren said. After a few seconds she added, “I am including an additional task to acquire a magic-based translation device, if such a thing is available. The cost may be charged to my Endeavor once you leave the depths.”

Miles looked at Trin and Torg. Torg was looking directly back at him, his expressionless black eyes locked on Miles.

Miles had never fully got the hang of reading Torg’s body language, but he thought their lancer believed him.

Meanwhile, Trin had picked up on the possibility of repeat work.

“How we find you again?” Trin asked. “And what if you dead?”

Ovren ignored the second question, focusing on the first.

“I’m giving you a locator frequency. Check it following each reconfiguration. Eventually I will be within range of your party. I plan to configure our environment to favor proximity to the crater wall.”

Ovren only took another minute on their computer before they pulled out what looked like a chip of red glass and passed it to Trin.

“The data files. They are encrypted to their recipients. Simply upload them to the comm network. The payment is encoded as a message to our Endeavour’s accounting system.”

Trin took the chip, slipping it into a pocket. With nothing else to interest him in the room, the scout looked like he was just waiting to leave.

Ovren turned away, seeming to put him completely out of her mind.

“Subrost Elynn, bring any surviving team members to this room. I need to prepare for the next reconfiguration.”

Miles still had questions, but Trin was already back at the door. He kept shooting discreet glances at the hand-cart full of looted Floreen equipment standing further down the corridor.

“Come on. Time to go,” he called. “We have to get back to entrance and… send message.”

Elynn moved to stand by them at the door, which only made Trin seem more impatient.

“Thank you for helping me escape,” Elynn said. “I don’t think Provost Ovren knew any of us were still clean of regression.”

“You are welcome,” Trin said. “It is what we do. Saving people. All the time saving people.”

“I will come with you part of the way,” Elynn said.

“No, is okay. We will move too quickly for you,” Trin said. “Bye bye.”

Trin left the room with Drani and Torg. Miles said his goodbyes to Elynn and followed after them. Together, they set off at a quick walk back down the corridor.

Miles was still resigning himself to leaving the researchers behind, and not just that, but entertaining the idea of coming back to try and find them.

Sapients living full time in the dungeon seemed like such a strange concept. He was skeptical that it would work. Maybe they’d find the Floreen facility a few days from now and find them all dead, or reduced to the animal states they’d found most of them in. More likely, they’d never see them again.

They passed one of the open doors on the way. Miles glanced in Drani’s direction.

Now might have been a good time to tell Trin and Torg about the call he’d got on the dungeon-tech cellphone, back on Earth. He could tell them about the new spell he’d found on his index, Boundary Breach. About Tower Child, the new tradition that had appeared.

He might even be able to test the spell out. He was with his team, close to the exit, in an area they knew was clear. There might not be a better time.

In the end, he didn’t tell them about it.

He didn’t want to raise the subject in front of Drani. Even if the other mage couldn’t understand him, he might ask Trin what Miles was talking about and Trin might tell him.

The walk back to the exit felt twice as long as it actually was. The door back to the crater and the outside world was still open, waiting for them.

They filed out through the crack in the rock, and back onto the transport platform. The journey back to the city was tense and silent.

***

“Trin, how do you feel about Drani?” Miles asked, later that night.

The exchanges he’d had with the other healer had been bothering him all evening. He’d been going back over them, picking them apart, poking at them like something stuck in his teeth. He wanted to pass the other mage’s behavior off as cultural differences, or lack of communication. But lack of communication had been a big part of the problem, and Miles couldn’t help thinking that it had been a choice on Drani’s part.

Someone with the amount of delta Trin had been boasting about could have upgraded to Eyes of the Émigré at any time. Someone with the seln to get that much delta could have got a translator that was at least as good as Trin’s.

If it came down to a choice, then it had to have been Drani’s choice to be rude, to be dismissive, to be a jerk.

Trin shifted on his bed, then half rolled over, looking to where Miles was lying on his own bed on the opposite side of the room. Sleeping in the Eppan style involved lying on a hammock-style net, covered in a ragged blanket made of different kinds of fabrics, with different colors and textures. Miles had picked his giant sleeping bag over the patchwork blanket Trin had offered, but otherwise preferred the hammock to the mattress in their first apartment.

“Eh?” Trin said.

“Are you friends, or is this just a business arrangement?” Miles asked.

Trin took a minute to fully wake up before he answered.

“Drani is summer boy. Summer boys are eh — loud. Do I like him? No. But he is Eppan and there not many Eppans here. And even less Eppans same age as me. He tries to be around me, and it is easy to go along.”

“You miss being around other Eppans?” Miles asked.

The possibility took Miles by surprise. He’d spent long enough as the only human on Ialis that he assumed everyone felt the same way as him. He’d left humanity behind, and didn’t miss it. The beings around him were just as much people as anyone he grew up around, many of them more so. Conversation, company, and friends were what he needed. It hadn’t occurred to him that Trin might want it to come in the same shape as him.

“Yes, and not just being around, if you know?” Trin said. “But maybe Drani is not worth it. He is very pushy. I do not think I need him. No. He is boring.”

“Okay. I think I’d rather not go on any more dives with him, if that’s okay?” Miles said. “I mean, we shouldn’t need to now that I’m back right?”

“Yes. Okay. I will delete him from my comm.”

“Well, you don’t have to do that.”

“Okay. I will just ignore all messages.”

“Okay. Sure.”

Trin rolled back over. Miles sank down in his sleeping bag, tried to ignore the cloying smell of Eppan oils the shower had doused him with, and closed his eyes.

He’d expected to fall straight asleep. Tris into Ialis were exhausting, he had a bed to himself, and the weariness from his trip back from Earth had even pushed Hum of the Enduring’s ability to sustain him to its limit. Instead, he found himself staring into the darkness of his closed eyes. The darkness reminded him of the opening in the dungeon room. He lay listening to his breathing, but all he could hear was the slow oscillation of air coming through that dark hole.

Eventually he rolled over and fished one of the small pill-shaped light beads from his gear. He tapped it on the ground to bring it to life, and set it on the ground as a night light. When he could close his eyes without leaving himself in darkness, he could finally sleep.